We study the fame distribution of scientists and other social groups as
measured by the number of Google hits garnered by individuals in the
population. Past studies have found that the fame distribution decays either in
power-law [arXiv:cond-mat/0310049] or exponential [Europhys. Lett., 67, (4)
511-516 (2004)] fashion, depending on whether individuals in the social group
in question enjoy true fame or not. In our present study we examine critically
Google counts as well as the methods of data analysis. While the previous
findings are corroborated in our present study, we find that, in most
situations, the data available does not allow for sharp conclusions.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of the 8th Granada
seminar on Computational Physic
